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Resource View not displaying for Information Store when restoring exchange EDB (v15)

seanpowell
Level 2

I'm trying to restore the EDB files for some offline analysis from a very old back up tape...  I can restore files and folders ok, but if I select both Microsoft Exchange Information Store and Microsoft Exchange directory and click restore, then in the resulting Restore Wizard view, I do not see anything to select below my server name in the "Resource View" box which should show the file structure.  I *have* changed my date range in the "Show backups from" date range prompt to include the date of the backup.

I have also tried duplicating the Information Store to disk storage, which provides a .bkf file for each of the Information Store and the Exchange Directory.  No change if I try and restore using the duplicated Disk Storage vs the tape as the source - ie, still cannot select the server name or expand the Resource View once I set the date range appropriately.  From reading other posts here, I thought duplicating to disk would give me the EDB file inside an IMG folder, but I just get the .bkf file.

Source Exchange server was 5.5 (which at the time was running on an NT4 environment, I believe), and I'm using Backup Exec v15 on a Server 2012 environment to attempt the restore.  I don't know what method or settings were used to backup the exchange files at the time, but the backup generally appears to be sound, as I can restore files/folders ok.  The source environment as well as hardware is long gone, so all I'm trying to do is extract the EDB, then I can analyse it using other tools.

any ideas?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

I suspect you will struggle with that one, GRT backup processing did not exist against Exchange 5.5, and you had a choice of an Exchange Database Backup or a Brick Level (Mailbox) backup and these did not provide accessible EDB files in an IMG folder (like a GRT process can do)

Unfortunately to restore from either of those Exchange backup types you have to have an Exchange 5.5. server built with the same Exchange environment details AND you have to also restore using a version of Backup Exec that supports Exchange 5.5 (off-hand all I can say about this is it has to be much older than Backup Exec 2010. EDIT: in fact older then 12.0, which supported back to Exchange 2000)

Even if you had the ability to recreate an environment to restore into, you would need to know which type of backup (complete database vs brick level) was performed and have the documentation that provides all the details of how the Exchange environment used to be.

Gut feeling is you have an impossible task (that would probably be impossible no matter what backup software you had used as most of the limitations are from Exchange 5.5/NT4 and nothing to do with the backup software used)

For info, newer versions of Backup Exec can read the media from older versions (as long your hardware can also read the media) , and for file system backups means you would be able to restore. However in order to restore database technologies the version of Backup Exec still has to support the version of the database that was backed up AND the environment being restored into typically has to still have the version that was backed up available and running. There is a minor exception to this when Exchange GRT capability is used during the backup as this may allow you to get at the EDB files or even do a redirected restore to PST.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 REPLIES 2

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

I suspect you will struggle with that one, GRT backup processing did not exist against Exchange 5.5, and you had a choice of an Exchange Database Backup or a Brick Level (Mailbox) backup and these did not provide accessible EDB files in an IMG folder (like a GRT process can do)

Unfortunately to restore from either of those Exchange backup types you have to have an Exchange 5.5. server built with the same Exchange environment details AND you have to also restore using a version of Backup Exec that supports Exchange 5.5 (off-hand all I can say about this is it has to be much older than Backup Exec 2010. EDIT: in fact older then 12.0, which supported back to Exchange 2000)

Even if you had the ability to recreate an environment to restore into, you would need to know which type of backup (complete database vs brick level) was performed and have the documentation that provides all the details of how the Exchange environment used to be.

Gut feeling is you have an impossible task (that would probably be impossible no matter what backup software you had used as most of the limitations are from Exchange 5.5/NT4 and nothing to do with the backup software used)

For info, newer versions of Backup Exec can read the media from older versions (as long your hardware can also read the media) , and for file system backups means you would be able to restore. However in order to restore database technologies the version of Backup Exec still has to support the version of the database that was backed up AND the environment being restored into typically has to still have the version that was backed up available and running. There is a minor exception to this when Exchange GRT capability is used during the backup as this may allow you to get at the EDB files or even do a redirected restore to PST.

 

 

 

 

 

 

thanks Colin - at least there is a solid reason for my lack of success then!

The earliest backup exec serial I could find was when we upgraded from 7 to v8.6 but I have no idea what we started off on at the time.